Are Thinking Styles and Personality Types

ABSTRACT The relationship between thinking styles and personality types is investigated within the contexts of Sternberg’s theory of mental self-government and Holland’s theory of personality types. A total of 600 university students from Hong Kong responded to the Thinking Styles Inventory (TSI) and the Short-version Self-directed Search (SVSDS) that was specially designed for the present study. A major nding of this study is that thinking styles and personality types overlap to a degree. A secondary nding is that the SVSDS is suf ciently reliable and valid for assessing Holland’s personality types. Implications of both ndings are discussed. Styles, as an individual-difference variable in human performance, have long been investigated. Between the late 1950s and 1970s, many theories and models of styles were constructed. However, this mass production of theories and models of styles went into a state of subsidence partially due to the overwhelming output from the eld and partially due to its lack of internal dialogue (Jones, 1997). By 1991, when Riding and Cheema reviewed the area, 30 style labels showed up in the literature. As a result, we are left with a research eld that embraces a confusing variety of seemingly different, ye